A GOOD AGE: Mystery at Thayer Academy in Braintree

There’s a mystery waiting to be solved at the Thayer Academy archives.

By Sue Scheible

The Patriot Ledger, Quincy, MA

By Sue Scheible

Posted Apr. 16, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Apr 16, 2013 at 4:08 PM

By Sue Scheible

Posted Apr. 16, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Apr 16, 2013 at 4:08 PM

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There’s a mystery waiting to be solved at the Thayer Academy archives.

The barrel-shaped object was brought in this spring by a school buildings and grounds worker. He was given it by a contractor who is renovating one of the school’s houses on Washington Street. The house is opposite the school’s main entrance at the corner of Washington and Union streets.

“The contractor said it probably probably wouldn’t stay there in the house for long if we just left it,” teacher and archivist Larry Carlson said. The grounds worker picked it up and brought it to the archives.

The object has a hopper on top and looks like a barrel. It has a shaft in the front with a handle on it; the shaft fits into a socket inside. It could fit on a large table top.

Carlson and Lillian Wentworth, 99, a retired teacher and head librarian who serves as head archivist, are hoping the public might be able to help. Dan Forrest, also an archivist, is on the case as well.

“All the parts inside probably are not there, but we don’t know what is missing,” Carlson said.

On the front, where the handle is, someone painted a tranquil scene of a red grist mill by a river. That was probably done at a date later than when the object was used, Carlson believes.

“Maybe it was displayed,” Wentworth said.

Carlson has been asking various people he knows for their ideas, and Wentworth has been researching archive records on the house’s ties to the school.

Guesses have ranged from a grain hopper to a tabletop churn to a washing machine. The object is missing a full set of feet, so it doesn’t sit level.

“It looks like it was a tabletop model of something,” Carlson said. “My money has been from the very beginning that it has something to do with winnowing grain – to separate or clean grain. I think the painting was made a long time after.”

He looked through old Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalogs going back to 1900, without finding any clues, but he said it is “definitely older than that.”

A woman who works in the Thayer Academy cafeteria told him she used to live in the house where it was found. She thinks another cafeteria worker at the school might have given it to her, so it may not have any direct link to Thayer. It may have come from another house and been left in the house Thayer acquired.

“I’d like to find out what it is and if it has any particular relationship to the academy,” Carlson said. “I’m not sure it does.”

Wentworth found out that the house was purchased by Thayer for use as a kindergarten 77 years ago, and that the kindergarten was on the main floor. A family lived upstairs.

Page 2 of 2 - “So we know it is at least 77 years old,” she said.

The longer people sit beside it and poke inside, the more ideas come up.

“Someone said, ‘How about a stovetop popcorn maker?’ but you wouldn’t be putting this on the stove,” Carlson said.